AIESECers at PwC

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Saturday, November 18, 2006

Travelling maina

Currently back in Hong Kong...Time flies and it is only less than five months since I left here in July, but when I'm back to the place where I started off, my whole world has been significantly changed.

When travelling has become the routine of my daily life, I really have the feeling that "World is our playground."

In the past month, I have been to London, Luxembourg, Milano, Frankfurt and met a lot of people, including AIESEC supporters - Painters, Directors, Managers, AIESEC alumni working in PwC; AIESEC members - MC, LC, CEEDer and PwC trainees. You see familiar faces everywhere, you talk the same language everywhere and you understand each other quite well everywhere. It is just simply amazing...

What impresses and inspires me most is meeting Marianno in Italy. As a partner, he still spent more than two hours with me and the AIESEC members to talk about the development of the partnership. He also spontaneously offers help in building up the relationship between AIESEC and French firm. I felt so motivated on my role when I did meet somebody who is that open-minded and supportive to our youth organisation...

In the coming month, I'm going to consolidate a little bit on my past work...and, looking forwards to IPM in Egypt!

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Trainees make the world go round...

In my previous posting (few minutes ago) I was speaking about the people in PwC who really made my staying here worthwhile. It would make no sense then not to talk about the trainees…

And speaking about them, the moment I am writing this, one of the PwC trainees is on his way to the airport to fly back to Brazil. Eduardo was a trainee in PwC in Brussels and next January he will embark upon another PwC experience on the other side of the ocean, in New York. Andreea and he were the first trainees to come in Brussels after my starting the role as coordinator and gave me the motivation to try my best and enlarge the trainees’ crew. I felt most happy to still be around when the enlargement took place- we are now 10 minus 1 (with Eduardo leaving) in Brussels. I wish I could have the chance to meet face2face all trainees in PwC worldwide…you never know.

Just came back from a lunch with Abhijeet where we had an eye-opening conversation about past and current realities in Romania, India and European Union. I had a similar one last week with Agustin about Mexico.This last Saturday Mengting cooked for us a delicious Chinese dinner at Xavier and Chin’s place- we were about 12 people (PwC, DHL, Microsoft, European Commission trainees). Among others (notably an interesting conversation about Chinese accents and name pronunciation), Leon (an Australian trainee, Honk-Kong origin) and Xavier thought me how to use chop-sticks (OK, OK, I do not do it the proper way, but at least I no longer drop the food each time I try to take from the plate). Then Belha (Tunisia) thought us how to say Open Sesame in Arabic (next thing I will ask him to teach me few basic phrases in Arabic- will be useful for my Moroccan trip next year).All these might be little things, but they are definitely the type of experiences that help me discover new worlds.

Lastly, don’t think life with the trainees is only about discussions…oh no, the farewell party for Eduardo was as inspirational as the discussions mentioned above. Not to mention the moment Abhijeet and I dared (I admit, he tricked me into this) to put on our shoulders two huge (disgusting, I might add) snakes that were part of the show in the disco where we had the bye-bye party. No pictures were taken, so I cannot share with you the scary face I had. However, Abhijeet can testify that I was horrified…I think I left a mark when I grabbed his leg the moment I saw one of the snakes smiling at me:-).

There are more stories to tell, but I here I just blogged some highlights of my enjoying life with PwC trainees. Guys, I am truly excited you are here…I look forward to having more stories to share with you and about you.

Cya…NoricaPS: in the previous posting I did manage to upload pictures (Agustin did not finish his consultancy job yet)- I'll try posting one with Eduardo unleashing his energy at the farewell party...

Glimpse in the past...

I’ve postponed for quite some time writing on the PwC-AIESEC blog. (If you met me in person, you will have realized by now I have serious challenges with technology. Hence, it was not easy to solve the mistery of making postings on this blog. Thank you, Agustin for taking the time to consult me- hope you can use a chargeable code for this job:-)). Now that I made it, for my first posting I would like to share with you one particular image that came back to my mind these days. It’s the image of myself waiting for one hour in the airport in Istanbul for the connecting flight to take me back to Romania for the Christmas holiday. It was 23rd December 2005 and I was coming back from a conference in Baku, Azerbaijan- see picture. That one hour waiting there alone right before Christmas gave me the chance to have a brief looking back into 2005, but not only- tears started rolling down on my face after couple of minutes. Hm, not funny at all- in the next second all the people around me gave me a strange look, the look of “is she insane? We’ve better move one chair away, who knows what she might be up to.” But what they did not know was that I was exploding of happiness inside and on the outside that converted into tears. As I looked back, I saw Norica in 2002 at the beginning of her AIESEC journey having what I thought it was just a nice dream- to become the coordinator for a global AIESEC partnership. More than three years later, in July 2005 I did accomplish a dream which I had forgotten in the meantime. And still, it was not the fact that I accomplished that dream which determined my outburst, but the fact that the reality was to my surprise far better than the dream itself. The one year experience as a Global Coordinator in PwC has been the utmost experience for me. Each piece of this experience had it’s own role: I had to deal with a partnership that it’s more as a long-lasting friendship, I kept in touch with AIESEC, I travelled to so many new (exotic) countries, I had to go beyond my personal and professional limits, I was trusted and given important responsibilities, I worked hard and, last but not least, I enjoyed great results as well as I experienced non-achievements which enriched even more my learning path. All these pieces put together formed a puzzle that I was proud to look at in the end of my journey. But the true linchpin of this puzzle, as mentioned many times, were (and, fortunately still are) the peopleI had the chance to meet, work with and get inspiration from. In the end, behind any great company/ partnership/ experience there are people who make dreams happen. Inspiration, motivation, enlightening…I felt all these more strongly in the past year than in my whole life. And they all came from the people with whom I worked. The list starts with my boss, Karel- Global AIESEC Champion. Luckily (maybe unluckily for him:-)) I continue working with him in my current role as well. Extremely structured, fast responsive, well organized (a bit of a freak I might say:-)), attentive towards your personal and professional development opportunities, visionary, always questioning decision made (don’t think it’s always easy working with him, but that makes it just great)…yep, for me it was the perfect recipe for a truly inspirational boss. (Karel, if you ever happen to read this, I did my best to put you in a good light:-)). Karel was not the only one that made my experience an incredible one. Meeting people such as Keith Bell, Paul Batchelor (former Global AIESEC Champions), Richard Baird (HC Global Managing Partner and great supporter of AIESEC) in my AIESEC-related role or working with Marianne Dewandeleer from PwC in Belgium literally propelled me. And the list could definitely continue: AIESEC alumni who are now working in PwC, PwC AIESEC contacts in countries all over the world, PwC colleagues in Belgium. It was all about the people I got in contact with that deepened the positive impact one year experience as coordinator had on me. PS: I did not mention here, on purpose, the cherry on the cake of the PwC-AIESEC partnership- the trainees…my dears, I did not forget about you, on the contrary, my next posting is entirely dedicated to you. It will be coming shortly...if I still remember how to post thoughts in this space:-)

Monday, November 06, 2006

Group picture and leaving!

Well, finally last week the PwC office in Belgium decided to take a "serious" picture with all the AIESEC interns. It was no easy to find a proper "angle" for this picture, but I think we got it in the end; having all the smiling faces that reflects the youth and dinamism that is required to work in a multinational company such as PwC. Of course is something you always get when you gather AIESEC interns in any company or any place.

For the more formal pictures, we just missed Norica very much. We own her to be right now here having this great time at PwC Belgium.

And if you are wondering, the photo posted is just the "after-lunch" celebration for the formal photo (this one is going to be published later I believe) and a departure.

Now I'm talking about a leaving. Well on the other hand, just few days after this picture, one of the "old" members left us: Eduardo from Brazil. He had already about 1 year in the office and now he is moving to the New York office, but first enjoying the Brazilian summer ("caraio" I repeat it to you, I'm real jealous). Anyway Edu, if you're reading this, we are really going to miss you. We wish you the best of lucks.

So this show us that everyone is attached to cycle as an intern. At any given moment our days in one place will end, but what matters at the end are the friendships and good moments you keep with you afterwards.

By the way, Eduardo, you definitely have to post something here about your New York experience...